Question of the Day

Should the Electoral College be abolished?

NEW YORK — Hanna Morawiecka was reunited with the Jewish boy whose family she helped rescue from extermination in Poland during World War II. A beaming Andre Nowacki, now 68, greeted the Polish woman Wednesday at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

“Hanna Morawiecka, my little sister,” he said after hugging her and presenting her with a bouquet of carnations. “You haven’t changed since you were 9,” she told him in Polish.

They first met in 1942, when Miss Morawiecka, her two sisters and their mother took in the Nowacki family after Mr. Nowacki’s father was sent to a Nazi death camp. Both families fled a burning Warsaw in 1944 after the Germans moved in to quell an uprising.

PENNSYLVANIA

Managers collect tolls in turnpike strike

CARLISLE — Pennsylvania Turnpike managers began collecting tolls early Thanksgiving Day as the first strike in the turnpike’s 64-year history entered its second day.

The managers had anticipated a walkout by about 2,000 collectors, maintenance workers and office employees so they waived tolls all day Wednesday. The waiver was expected to cost an estimated $1.7 million to $2 million in lost revenue.

Just after midnight, nearly 400 managers began collecting $2 per car and $15 per commercial vehicle. The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission planned to bring in temporary workers to collect tolls along with the managers, who were putting in 12-hour shifts.

COLORADO

Rock slide closes Interstate 70

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — Workers cleared several boulders the size of buses from Interstate 70 yesterday after a rock slide closed a 24-mile section of the highway.

No one was injured in the rock slide because the highway had been closed earlier in the morning when a truck overturned. Crews were getting ready to reopen the highway, when the rocks began falling about a mile away.

The rock slide caused officials to close I-70 between Glenwood Springs and Gypsum, forcing travelers on a 220-mile detour through the mountains of the western part of the state. Officials said the highway sustained an “enormous amount” of damage, ensuring that it would be closed for at least a day.

FLORIDA

Baby found unhurt in stolen car

MONTICELLO — A 6-month-old boy who was in a car when a thief stole it was found unharmed yesterday, about 25 miles from where the vehicle vanished the previous evening, authorities said.

Ja-Marquez Izhaun Pringle was still in a car seat in the back of the 1998 Ford Taurus when it was located by a Leon County sheriff’s deputy, Lt. Silas Lewis said. The car was parked at a Tallahassee housing project.

The car was stolen Wednesday evening in Monticello, about 25 miles east of Tallahassee, while the baby’s grandmother was dropping off another child. An Amber Alert was issued. No arrests have been made, the deputy said.

GEORGIA

Modern-day prospector finds class rings

ATLANTA — Hurricanes that struck the Florida coast this year churned up more than sand along Daytona Beach. They also yielded gold — rings of gold that were 40 years old.

Two persons are richer for it, after their high-school class rings from the 1960s were found by Lorrie Sprigg, a modern-day prospector using a metal detector.

Miss Sprigg turned over Larry Mitchell’s 1964 Clarkston High School ring, which was lost on spring break that year.

“It was just a real big shock for me. That’s 40 years. You just don’t expect something to turn up,” Mr. Mitchell said Tuesday.

On a separate outing, Miss Sprigg found a 1963 ring from Christian County High School, which she traced to Kentucky and then to Beth Townsend.

Ms. Townsend said she wasn’t even aware that her ring had been lost in Florida, where she also had been on spring break.

ILLINOIS

Ceiling collapse injures government workers

SPRINGFIELD — At least four people were injured Wednesday when netting across the open atrium of a six-story government building collapsed and tore down stones that crashed through the ceiling of a room below.

The netting was weighed down by snow and ice, the result of a storm that blanketed the Midwest on Wednesday.

The collapse also apparently ruptured a sewer pipe and filled the building with sewer gas that then drifted into the state Capitol, which is connected by a tunnel. Both buildings were temporarily evacuated.

KANSAS

Man convicted in series of killings

KANSAS CITY — A man was convicted Wednesday in a series of killings that prosecutors said began as retaliation for the robbery and beating of his mother.

Darrell Lamong Stallings, 34, was found guilty of five counts of capital murder, one count of attempted murder and other charges stemming from the June 2002 rampage. Another Kansas City man, 28-year-old Errik Harris, faces the same charges; a trial date has not been set.

Prosecutors said Stallings fatally shot Trina Jennings, 26, who was seven months pregnant, and wounded Anthony Jennings to avenge what Stallings thought were their roles in the robbing and beating of his mother two months earlier.

MASSACHUSETTS

Mayor seeking repeal of anti-Indian law

BOSTON — Mayor Tom Menino took the first step Wednesday toward repealing a 329-year-old law that orders the arrest of all American Indians who enter the city.

The law has not been enforced for centuries, but tribes have been trying to win a repeal for years.

The City Council passed a resolution in favor of repeal last year; the final action must be taken by the legislature. Mr. Menino filed a petition to set the legislative process in motion.

“It’s time to make things right,” he said.

The colonial legislature approved the statute on Oct. 13, 1675, during King Philip’s War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history — a series of guerrilla battles between British colonists and tribes.

MICHIGAN

Dog mothering, nursing stray kittens

EDWARDSBURG — A Shih Tzu who, her owners say, longed for years to give birth is finally getting a chance to nurse some little ones, even if they’re the wrong species.

Owners Jean and Bill Schirf said the dog, named Geisha Girl, used to take a toy dog, wrap herself around it in her basket and mother it for a week or two.

Now she’s doing the same thing with two stray kittens that Jean Schirf found two weeks ago in the woods behind her Cass County home.

Not only did Geisha Girl start watching over and cleaning the kittens, which have been named Dilly and Dally, she started lactating within about a week — enough to provide them with some of the milk they need. Mrs. Schirf helps out by bottle-feeding the cats 2 percent milk.

UTAH

Non-Mormons speak at Tabernacle

SALT LAKE CITY — Two leading conservative Protestants, author-evangelist Ravi Zacharias and Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw, preached at the Tabernacle on Temple Square, the first time non-Mormons had spoken there in 105 years.

“I’m not being melodramatic when I say this is an historic occasion,” Mr. Mouw said, adding fellow evangelicals have “often seriously misrepresented the beliefs and practices” of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Nearly 5,000 evangelicals and Mormons sat together during the event, sponsored by Standing Together, a network of 100 evangelical churches that seeks improved relations with Mormons.

Mr. Zacharias, a native of India raised in Canada, was candid about doctrinal differences between traditional Christianity and Mormonism on such aspects as sin, salvation through the cross and the divine Trinity.

But his message that Jesus Christ is the answer to the longing in all human hearts resonated with both the evangelicals and Mormons.

WASHINGTON

Antispetic injection kills patient

SEATTLE — A woman who underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm died after she was mistakenly injected with an antiseptic solution instead of a harmless X-ray marker dye, hospital officials say.

Mary McClinton, 69, of Everett, had the operation Nov. 4 at Virginia Mason Medical Center and died Tuesday.

At the end of her operation, a technician was supposed to inject the dye into a leg artery. Instead, the syringe was filled with chlorhexidine, a highly toxic solution used to clean the skin, hospital quality chief Dr. Robert Caplan said.

The solution “caused widespread damage to the organs of her body,” Dr. Caplan said.